What Life is Like Tending Bar in Mykono

 

Jeff—Saturday

Current events being what they are these days, I almost feel like going back to drinking.  But I shant. Instead I'll share some secrets I've learned in (many) years past from those in the know who worked one of the foremost Greek Island bars....that's sadly no longer there.  But there's much to be learned from their recollections.  So, here we go.

Mykonos’ legendary Montparnasse Piano Bar closed for the season Friday night, giving all of its fans the chance to say adieu to its proprietors, Jody Duncan and Nikos Hristodulakis.  They’re responsible for bringing Broadway quality singers and pianists to the island, such as Kathy “Babe” Robinson and Mark Hartman who performed on its final night.

All of which inspired me to share insights I’ve gained from years of conversations with its singers and pianists.  Those impressions are incorporated into the story line of my Spring 2019 Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis novel, but I think they’re worthy of a bit of time in the spotlight on their own.  So, here goes….

Playing piano in a bar requires a certain mindset.  Think of it as trying to gain your balance on a surfboard...while playing a piano.

As the piano player, it’s up to you to read the room, and adjust on the fly to make sure everyone has a good time.  It could be the same crowd as from another night, but this time they show up with a completely different vibe.  The other night might have been their first night on the island, and everyone was up for a hell-raising good time. But when it came to their last night, it’d be all about nostalgia.

Unlike concert-goers, bar patrons show up with a mix of interests and expectations regarding the music: celebrants might come looking for upbeat tunes; friends on a night out might shout out song requests; business people might ignore the music as long as they can hear each other talk; and, of course, any alcohol-fueled seduction requires a background of romantic music.  Then there’s the solitary, glad-handing, over-imbiber who can’t resist trying to transform his evening alone into a communal sing-a-long

.

Whatever the mix of audience members, the piano-bar player faces the ever-present background chatter of customers, waiters, and bartenders exchanging orders and quips, all searching for the right volume at which to conduct their discussions, above or below the rattle of glassware and din of competing conversations.

If you work long enough in piano bars, you develop a mindset to cope with all of that.  Or you go crazy. 

When starting out in the business, some shut their eyes as they play and drift off into the sounds of the room, listening for the evening’s competing tones and rhythms, crescendos and diminuendos, bursts of staccato laughter, trumpeting shouts, and unexpected bits of silence.  Whether working with a singer or alone, they view their job as something like an orchestra conductor’s: to unite all those disparate sounds into a unified, symphonic performance. And ideally to draw the audience into an appreciative, tip-giving state of mind in the process.

As I said, that’s their thinking when they start out in the business.  But, over time, they come to learn their true role in a piano bar, and with that realization achieve a Zen-like understanding of the meaning of their life’s work.  It’s so simple, so obvious, and so intrinsically calming to an artist’s soul:

Their job is to sell drinks. Period, end of story.

I’ll drink to that.  Thank you, David Dyer, Mark Hartman, and Bobby Peaco for all those wonderful tunes.

David

Mark

Bobby

PS. I'd be woefully remiss if I didn't mention the two brilliant vocalists in addition to Babe who bring their Broadway level talents to bear in making The Piano Par the place to be in the Cyclades for high end entertainment--Phyllis Pastore, who's been wowing audiences here for 27 years, and Sara Mucho, the youngest member of the Montparnasse musical crew.  Thank you all!

—Jeff

Environment Matters

Karen Odden - every other Thursday 

I’ve just returned from hiking the Grand Canyon with my daughter, Julia, and her new fiancé, Braden. It’s probably the twentieth time I’ve hiked it since moving to Arizona in 2003. Usually, we go down Kaibab Trail to the Colorado River and back up Bright Angel Trail in a day (16 miles, 5,000 feet elevation change), but sometimes we take one of the other trails. Last year I hiked North Rim to South Rim (25 miles), which was our plan this time, but the lodge at North Rim burned down this past summer – truly a tragedy; it was a treasured landmark – so we rejiggered our route to the South Rim trails. Thunderstorms were predicted, but they held off, and we had dreamy, drifty clouds all day instead. 

When I say, "environment matters," I mean that the geography of a place can affect every aspect of a dweller’s life. When I moved to Arizona, I had no idea how profoundly my life and my body, my daily practices, and my ways of thinking about everything from water to distances would be changed. 

I still remember the first morning I woke up in Arizona. We’d bought a house in the foothills of the McDowell Mountains, with a patio out back. I came out with my coffee and sat, mesmerized by the enormous inverted blue bowl of sky, and I swear something in my chest cracked open. (This photo is from Sunrise Trail, about twenty minutes from my house, taken one afternoon last year.) 

Within a few months, I made some new friends who happened to be avid hikers (as many Arizonans are), and I tagged along, more for the company than the exercise, to be honest. Eventually a 4- or 5-mile hike became my morning routine, and I started hiking the Grand Canyon every year. This is not something I could have done back east – or could have imagined doing. 

This is my point, I guess. What I can imagine, and how I perceive the world and myself in it, is profoundly determined by my physical landscape. Perhaps it’s not the same for everyone or everywhere, but Arizona, with its vast desert, hulking mountains, unusual climate, and strange beauty, has impressed itself upon me more strongly than anywhere else I’ve lived (including upstate New York, New York City, Ann Arbor, San Diego, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Milwaukee, and, briefly, London). 

Living in Arizona, my children were outside every single day of their lives. In the fall, winter, and spring, we were at the park; in the summer, we were in the pool, rather than indoors for much of the winter, the way I was, growing up in Rochester NY, with dastardly winter temps. Because of Arizona, I’m scrupulously conscientious about hydrating; I always have a water bottle with me. I hike nearly every day. I’ve even lost my phobia about snakes (not that I don’t jump when I see one, but they’re just part of the landscape now). I also think nothing of a two-hour drive to Tucson to visit my son. And I believe I have a vaster sense of what is possible in my life generally, because every morning, from my hiking trail in the McDowells (photo, above), I can see for miles.

I don’t intend to tie everything back to my fascination with Victorian London, but the riparian  environment is one of the things that compels my interest. Think about it – what would London be without the Thames? The river is the lifeblood of the city, as well as the repository for the city’s detritus. From the times of Londinium, the river determined virtually everything about the city. 

When I wrote Down a Dark River, and made Inspector Corravan a former lighterman, I did it partly because I wanted to explore how the Thames and the land shaped each other, modes of travel, work, and experience, and people’s lives. 

Many people don't realize the Thames is tidal –twice a day, the river changes direction from ebb to flow. This is why mud larking – aka scrounging in the dirt on the banks of the river, like these folks are near Blackfriars Bridge (Dec. 2022) -- is still a popular pursuit. The tide washes up treasures and trash alike. FYI - if you want to try mud larking, you can book a guided expedition, complete with waders and bucket, on Tripadvisor here: https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g186338-d13998271-r946820248-Cultureseekers-London_England.html.

So here's a question for you: Of all the places you've lived, is there one that impressed itself upon you more than others, and, if so, why?

Blue Skies Smilin' On Me Redux

Annamaria on Monday

Today I am harkening back to a post from 9.75 years ago.  Yesterday, Brother Jeff talked about that proverbial question for novelists: where do you get your ideas.  Here is the story of my first week-long stay in my ancestral city of Siracusa.  I have been back a few times. (But not enough. For me there is never enough).  My ideas almost always start with a place. 

The visit this blog describes started a story pouring out of that place in my head where (it feels like to me) all my stories come from.  It is a story like some others I have written, but also a departure a significant way.

I worked on that story while I was also continuing with my East Africa series.  I had a good draft done by the dawn of 2019, when a tsunami of four bad/dumb issues hit the proverbial fan.  They began with a publishing snafu, and the last was Covid.  Now, I have real hopes for that story, which was inspired by my visit to Siracusa.   

First view of Etna while landing at Catania

I came to Sicily last Monday and found the weather of a lovely day in June in New York.  The richness of my experience that over this past week defies communicating in one blog post. If they asked me, I could write a book about this place and what it means to me and to the rest of the civilized word.  I will tell you more about it over the next few weeks.  Today, I will begin with my first two days alone in Siracusa and confine this post to the Ortigia—the island that comprised the city’s power center during ancient times and that is now, in its entirety, part of the Patrimony of Humanity.  (It does not include, by the way, the ancient ruins and the in-tact Greek theater, one of best preserved in the world, that are on the mainland.  We can go there another time.) 

The area around my ancestral city was inhabited in prehistory.  The first Greek settlers came to this island in 734 BC.  By 500 BC, Siracusa had overflowed the original island settlement and was as large as Athens.  Eventually, it became the capital of Magna Grecia.  I first visited in 1979 and have been back six or seven times.  But this time I came with a story in mind and there were specific things I wanted to look at that are important in the lives and movements of my characters. 

Let me show you just some of what I saw.

After checking in—

A view from my room.  This port is where a major battle of the Peloponnesian
Wars took place, when Siracusa defeated Athens.

Another view, toward the mainland part of the city

I headed straight for the Piazza del Duomo to visit the place of greatest interest for me, given my story, and for anyone who comes here: the Duomo itself.  The Greeks built a fabulous Doric temple on this spot.  When the first Christian sanctuary in Europe was built here, the architects incorporated the temple structure.  You don’t see the likes of this anywhere else.

Entering the Piazza del Duomo

The Baroque facade.

From the side view you can see the Doric columns of the
Temple of Athena, built by the Greek colonists in 500BC.

Here is the other side of that exterior wall, again with
the columns in plain view.

I have so many gorgeous things I want to show you, but I’ll have to stop now because the Wi-Fi where I am today is very slow and unstable, and we may see the turn of the next millennium before all the photos I would like to show you upload.  Besides. we have to be kind to Jeff and make sure that his level of envy does not reach apoplectic proportions.

As we say here, a presto (See you soon).  Presto is a word that does not apply to the speed of my Wi-Fi while working on this blog.

Here a few more shots taken on subsequent visits, with a better camera.

 Apology: Blogger won't let be schedule this for midnight.  It says that is against its rules.  It does this sometimes, but not all the time. I have tried to argue with it.  Evidently it is deaf as well as dumb. 

So, Dear Author, Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

Jeff–Saturday 

I doubt there’s an author out there who hasn’t been asked that question. Answers range from the comic to the cosmic, often citing sources as diverse as “my neighborhood Walmart” and “the Lord Almighty.” 

My personal favorite answer is Stephen King’s observation: “Amatures sit and wait for inspiration. The rest of us just get up and go to work.” 

Frankly, that advice applies to far more than just writers, for it’s a fair question often asked by folk who sincerely need a bit of guidance on the inspiration process. So, as a public service I’m going to offer an example of how I at times find inspiration. 

It's rather simple. I read the newspapers. 

Writing as I do about Greece, it’s usually Ekathimerini–Greece’s ‘paper of record– that I turn to for inspiration. Generally, it’s not the reported story that gets my plot and character development juices flowing, but rather what’s not there or left unanswered. 

For this post I’ve selected and set out below six articles from today’s Ekathimerini that suggested inspirational possibilities to me. What I wonder is whether they trigger any ideas in you? I’ve indicated in bold where I found what I think interesting plot and character inspiration possibilities. Do you see the same or something different? 

If not, perhaps Walmart isn’t such a bad idea.  

Article One: Questions abound as authorities review footage in case of drowned, unclaimed young girl.

 

Questions are mounting as authorities review CCTV footage related to the case of an unclaimed young girl, approximately three years old, who was found apparently washed ashore at Palaio Faliro beach in southern Athens in the early hours of Sunday morning. 

Investigators are concentrating on footage recorded Saturday night, several hours before the girl’s body was discovered. 

One video shows a woman walking in the Palaio Faliro area, accompanied by two young boys and pushing a pram containing another child. Authorities reviewing the footage believe the child in the pram appears to be wearing a long-sleeved swimsuit in fuchsia shades – matching the bathing suit worn by the girl found at Edem beach. The child’s face is covered by a kerchief and a hat. 

In subsequent footage, the same woman is seen stopping at a kiosk. The child in the pram remains in what appears to be the same position as in the previous scene. 

Later, another camera captures the woman abandoning an empty pram beside a shrub in a nearby park at Edem beach. 

[Inspiration:] The material gathered from the surveillance videos has prompted a number of observations. The two boys with the woman are not wearing swimsuits. The child’s facial features are fully obscured by the kerchief and hat, donned despite it being nighttime. Also, in all clips, the child seems to maintain an identical body posture. 

According to the coroner, the young girl died from drowning, estimated to have occurred 24 to 36 hours prior to the body’s discovery. 

Article Two: One man found dead, another injured in Athens apartment incident. 

A 31-year-old man was found dead and another injured at an apartment in central Athens on Friday afternoon after the survivor, a 48 year-old man who had been beaten and tied up, managed to free himself and alert police. 

Police officers arriving at the scene, at a flat in the capital’s Agios Panteleimonas district, discovered the victim tied up and severely beaten. 

The 48-year-old survivor, who was taken to Athens’ Evangelismos Hospital for treatment, claimed that four people entered the apartment and, after tying him and the 31-year-old victim, began beating them brutally. 

[Inspiration:] Forensic experts are assisting police in investigating the circumstances surrounding the incident. 

Article Three: Driver accused of killing 22-year-old in Hania crash remanded in custody. 

A 45-year-old man, accused of causing the fatal traffic accident in Hania [Crete] that claimed the life of a 22-year-old, was remanded in custody on Wednesday following his testimony. 

Test results showed that the man was heavily intoxicated at the time of the accident. 

During his testimony, he expressed deep regret and apologized. He stated that he felt immense sorrow for the 22-year-old and even mentioned that he would have preferred to have been the one to die instead. 

He is facing felony charges, with penalties ranging from 10 to 20 years in prison, as explained by his defense lawyer. 

[Inspiration:] On Tuesday, Greece’s Prime Minister ordered the removal of senior officers at the Hania Police Department after it was revealed that officers on the island failed to detain the driver, despite finding him driving under the influence and without a license shortly before the deadly accident. 

Article Four: Man, 53, pulled dead from makeshift tunnel near Larissa A 53-year-old man was pulled dead from a makeshift tunnel near the central city of Larissa, [Greece] authorities said on Wednesday.

The man had been trapped inside the tunnel on Tuesday afternoon in the remote area between the settlements of Gonnoi and Kallipefki. Rescuers initially maintained contact with him, but his condition deteriorated rapidly during the final stage of the extraction, the fire brigade said in a statement. 

Twenty-seven firefighters from Larissa and specialized emergency units in Thessaloniki and Larissa took part in the rescue operation, which concluded shortly after midnight, the statement added. 

Authorities said the tunnel had initially been entered by a group of four to five people, several of whom experienced dizziness and discomfort. One man managed to get out and alert emergency services, followed shortly afterwards by the others. 

The cause of the incident is under investigation, and officials are also examining the purpose of the tunnel’s construction. 

[Inspiration:] Local reports suggested it may have been dug in search of treasure. 

Article Five: Police focus on will, forensic evidence in double murder case. 

Police are focusing on forensic findings, electronic devices and the contents of a will to solve the double murder at the Foinikounda campsite in the Peloponnese, where a 68-year-old business owner and a 50-year-old caretaker were shot dead. 

Investigators are placing renewed attention on the victim’s latest will, which is scheduled to be opened on Friday at 9.30 am at the Pylos Magistrate’s Court. The process was expedited at the request of authorities, who are comparing it with a previous version drafted about a year ago, looking for any changes that could reveal a motive. 

No arrests have been made, but police have questioned the sole eyewitness – the victim’s nephew – who described the shooter as young, fair-skinned and petite. He did not recognize any of the suspects shown to him in photographs. Forensic reports suggest the owner was shot twice in his office, while the caretaker was hit three times while trying to flee. A fourth bullet struck a nearby caravan, and police are investigating whether it may have been aimed at the eyewitness. 

Video evidence shows a vehicle believed to have been used in the escape passing through villages in Ilia. Authorities suspect the killer fled by motorcycle, though the vehicle has not been found. The absence of security cameras at the scene has hindered progress. 

[Inspiration:] Police are also looking into a previous incident involving the 68-year-old victim, who was lightly injured in a shooting with an air gun about a month earlier. 

Article Six: Judge shot dead in Albania courtroom, gunman arrested after fleeing. 

A judge at the Tirana appeals court was shot dead on Monday by a man involved in a trial, police in Albania said. The gunman fled the scene but was later arrested. 

Judge Astrit Kalaja was shot inside the courtroom by a 30-year-old suspect with the initials E. Sh., according to police. Kalaja died while being taken to a hospital. 

The gunman also shot two other people involved in the hearing, police said. Their injuries weren’t life-threatening. 

Authorities haven’t provided details about the motive, or the nature of the case being heard. The case found at the court’s website referred to a property. 

Police later arrested the suspect, who ran away after the shooting, and also found the alleged revolver he used. 

[Inspiration:] Following sweeping judicial reforms launched in 2016 with support from the European Union and US, tens of thousands of cases have been delayed for years. [AP] 

––Jeff

The tale of the other painting!

 Caro From Scotland - Every Friday ( well I try to!)

The painting of the Scottish Landscape has played a crucial role in defining our artistic heritage. It is often looked at through a rather romantic lens, with less rain and less wind than a more realistic portrayal.  The colour palette of such a work of art would be fifty shades of brown with highlights of green and grey.

Here’s a quote ‘This genre {Scottish Romantic Landscape Painting} not only reflects the physical beauty of Scotland but also contributes to the broader narrative of Scottish identity and heritage.’

It might explain why we drink so much.

There are many famous Scottish paintings but let’s look at one painted by an Englishman, Mr Edward Landseer. I rather like that he’s called Landseer.

The Monarch of the Glen

Painted in 1851 to be hung in the Palace of Westminster, in London. I’m sure you are all familiar with it – well those who have hung about in this part of the world, as it sold widely in reproductions and was then bought by companies to use in advertising, soap, whisky and biscuits mostly.  According to the Sunday Herald the painting has become "the ultimate biscuit-tin image of Scotland: a bulky stag set against the violet hills and watery skies of an isolated wilderness".

Well, it’s a better image than Trainspotting!

In 2017 the National Galleries of Scotland bought the painting back for £4 million, about half its value at the time, for the people of Scotland, and was paid for by the people of Scotland.

So, standing back and looking at the landscape of Scottish art, in both senses, it’s no surprise that when a young artist called Pam Carter came along with a new look and a new interpretation, the art world was very impressed.

Pam mostly painted Scotland’s coastal scenery. Born in Tanganyika (now Tanzania) in 1952 to an Austrian mother and Scottish father, she moved to Scotland aged 13. But I think you can see in the way she uses colour that there’s a vibrancy and intensity about it that reflects back to her early life, steeped  in East African culture, weather and a very different landscape. She attended Glasgow School of Art in the 1970s ( That’s the MacIntosh building that was burned down) and spent much of her life teaching art before becoming a full time artist  at the millennium.

I think the website dedicated to her work explains it very well. ‘Her work is deeply rooted in the Scottish landscape, particularly the Western Isles and the dramatic coastlines of the east. She was drawn to the interplay of light and colour in these regions, often using bold hues to capture the changing moods of the sea and sky. Her paintings frequently feature white sandy beaches, rugged cliffs, and isolated crofts, evoking both the beauty and solitude of Scotland’s remote areas. Though human presence is rarely depicted directly, subtle signs—like smoke from chimneys or laundry on a line—hint at life within the landscape.’

And she does that beautifully. And I think her paintings have a sense of joy, fun, colour  and an energy. A nice contrast to rain, heather and a few rain drenched sheep.

There’s another artist I’d like to tell you about. Let’s call her Mo. She’s a rather lovely lady, full of laughter. She has a neurological condition that leaves her unable to work because, well, she falls over on a weekly basis, usually down the large hole she was trying to avoid.

If she medicates enough to have really good control of her balance etc, she becomes mentally slow and feels ‘dulled.’  As if her battery is running out, and it takes her too long to process things when her natural nature is as bright as a button, as sharp as a tack.

Her inability to stay upright/on course means she injures herself quite a lot, and that brings her into my clutches.

 In the village they know her and keep an eye out; when she feels an attack coming in, she can sit in the café,  or in the clothes shop, or in the butcher until it passes; much less damage to be done when falling from a sitting position.

She taught herself to paint, and therefore feels inferior to those who have a degree in it, but she’s very talented and can paint anything.

She found a picture I had on my facebook page and decided to paint it for me. She thought it was terrible, she thought I wouldn’t recognise it.

 I did immediately as it’s the view I look at when I go to Gran Canaria to write.

She offered to redo the trees as she didn’t think they were good enough.

I told her to leave it exactly as it is. It’s a delight!

Gran Canaria By Wee Mad Mo.

The Pushkin affair

 Michael - Alternate Thursdays

I suppose it’s a feature of the human condition that anything that can be sold will be stolen, and that anything with a significant value will be stolen more enthusiastically. One thinks of the Antwerp diamond heist in 2003 where something of the order of $100 million in diamonds were stolen from a vault at the diamond exchange. Culprits were caught and jailed, but most of the loot remains missing. Of course, the Antwerp Diamond Exchange was well aware of how valuable its stocks were and the gems were well guarded. The thieves needed to be clever and well-organized. How much easier then if the valuable items are basically left lying around. In that case the thieves don’t need to be clever at all. They just need to know what they're looking at and what to do with it once they've stolen it.

Then there's the question of the market. Of course thieves don’t expect to get the insured value or the open market value, only the black market value. Still, even 10c in the dollar would give the diamond thieves $10 million. And it seems that there are diamond traders who are willing to look past the careful steps to establish the provenance of the gems. When it comes to individual collectors of, say, rare books or iconic paintings, a few may allow the fixation to obtain the item overwhelm concerns about where it originated. Maybe not only a few.

Alexander Pushkin 1827 portrait

This brings us to the Pushkin thefts. Speaking for myself, I knew that Pushkin was an early nineteenth century Russian writer who died young. I’ve never read anything he wrote – apparently much of it is poetry that doesn’t translate easily. Probably I wouldn’t have read it anyway. But Pushkin is a very big deal in Russia, where he is now regarded as the father of Russian literature. In an age of Russian nationalism, that makes first editions of his works hugely collectible at home and few questions asked if any.

It turns out that many of these first editions are (or were) held in European state or university collections in the company of many other old extremely valuable books. In some cases, they are freely available to readers to examine, although of course they are not loaned. Well, not usually. As one of the book thieves described it, “Half a kilo of gold, worth 50,000 euros, is guarded by 22 armed men. Two books, worth 50,000, are lying somewhere in a library in Europe, and they are guarded by one little old lady.”

So it’s not too hard to get what you want. Potter into a library in, say, Warsaw. Ask to examine several classic books of Russian literature. Head out for a smoke break outside the building at some point. Perhaps you are a little beefier under your winter sweater. You don’t return. At some point the librarian returns to the reading room and finds that five of the books are gone.

Over the next several days they check the collection and find many other books missing. They've been replaced by “high-quality fake” replicas. Except that they're not very high quality at all. Photocopies on modern paper and shabby binding apparently are enough to persuade the librarians that these are their original books. The thieves are so sure of the casual way this is handled that they cheerfully return multiple times to lift other books. And the gang (or other independent crooks) are repeating this scenario across Europe’s collections. Nearly two hundred books are lifted before the alarm is set off. Interpol sets up “Operation Pushkin.”

You would expect that the stolen items are making their way to collectors with plenty of money but few scruples, and that these collectors will keep very quiet about their ill-gotten prizes. Well, not quite. The books are sold on public auctions in Russia! A particularly rare parcel made the TV news, which commented dryly that the origin of the material was "murky". Probably, they were quite happy to poke their ex allies in the eye with a pointed stick. It took Interpol more than a year to track down (some of) the thieves. Most of them received three year sentences. They'll have plenty of money to spend when they get out, and not much remorse. Two of the culprits, Druzhinin and Tsirekidze, put it this way in an interview with the BBC:

The narrow circle of buyers of expensive books, Druzhinin suggested, could see their purchases as a patriotic act. “It is a moment of historical return of significant books to their homeland,” he said.

From his prison in Estonia, Tsirekidze described the motives of Russian buyers of antique books differently.

“Why the hell does anyone still need [Pushkin]? This is purely Russian imperialism, chauvinism, this idea that he is ours, so he is great. If they think so and will pay tens, hundreds of thousands [of dollars] - let them pay, what’s wrong with that?”

Well, apart from the fact that it’s theft and that they're in prison for it, I suppose it comes down to a rich fool and his money.

I wish the libraries good luck with getting their property returned…

 

Dan Fesperman on Writing PARIAH

Dan Fesperman

In my youth at the long-gone Baltimore Evening Sun newspaper, Dan Fesperman was a successful hard news reporter who was also extremely kind to the new kids: ie, the interns and new hires straight out of college like myself who needed tips about where to go to actually get the facts for an article due in three hours' time. Dan rose in stature to become a foreign correspondent for the company's morning paper, the larger-circulation Baltimore Sun. Dan covered three wars and spent many years in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and South Asia. Incredibly, his first three thrillers were written while he was still reporting for the paper. Luckily for us, he retired and has sent eleven more books into the world. Dan's fiction has won two Dagger Awards from the UK Crime Writers Association, the Barry Award for Best Thriller, and the Dashiell Hammett Prize from the International Association of Crime Writers.  PARIAH, his latest effort, is set in a fictional Eastern European country called Bolrovia and stars a disgraced comedian (the pariah) turned bumbling (and also brilliant) spy. I asked Dan a few questions about his career and this hilarious and exciting novel. It's also notable that Dan narrates the audiobook version of PARIAH, and it's a tour de force with many different accents--as good as listening to the late John LeCarre read his own work.  Thank you, Dan, for being a guest author at Murder is Everywhere! --Sujata Massey

Tell us about the spark that became the plot of your newest book, Pariah.

Pariah came to life partly out of my fascination with the strange love affair that developed a while back between American conservatives and Viktor Orban, the strongman president of Hungary, whose power grab over the past few decades presaged a lot of what is happening now in Washington. And, by that, I mean not only Orban's ultra-nationalism, but also his ability to clear away most of Hungary's checks and balances on presidential power. He clamped down on the news media, universities, immigrants, dissenters, and so on. American conservatives saw that, loved it, and have set out with some success to replicate it, which is why we're now seeing similar tactics from Trump and Stephen Miller. And when you start to contemplate how tricky things might be for the CIA to build a network of spies in a place with those kinds of connections, and that kind of affinity to certain elements here, well, a lot of interesting scenarios quickly come to mind. So I was off and running.

 

You covered the war in Bosnia in 1992-95. You wrote about the time during and right after the wars in Sarajevo and Croatia in the beginning of your career as a novelist -- the two Vlado Petric books. Yet, this novel is set in 2023, and the country, Bolrovia, feels like it could be one of several Eastern European countries that are very popular to visit now. 

Dan's recent meal with old friends in Croatia 

I decided pretty early that I wanted to set the book in a fictional country instead of Hungary, partly for legal reasons, but more so because it freed me up to make the place a better fit for my characters and the plot. At first, I thought that would difficult, even a slog, but I quickly began to enjoy building my own world on the rough template of many of the places I'd visited and worked in. My hope was that Bolrovia, and particularly its capital city, Blatsk, would feel instantly familiar to anyone who has been to Prague, Budapest, Zagreb or Krakow. The city's more compact scale probably most closely evokes Krakow, while its drearier outlying areas bring to mind Zagreb, Budapest and even East Berlin. The Bolrovian countryside feels to me like some hybrid of Poland, Hungary and East Germany. And, as with most of those locations, Bolrovia's 20th Century history casts a long and deep shadow -- a brutal era of Nazi occupation followed in close order by four decades of Soviet domination, which ended abruptly and peacefully in 1989. This is a place in which both the leaders and their subjects know what a crackdown looks and feels like, and the many forms that can take. But I think the most pleasant byproduct of using a fictional setting was that I instantly felt more open to the idea of satire, and that mood soon began to infiltrate my prose. When you then choose a washed-up comedian as your main point-of-view character, the effect is accentuated, because this is someone who will see the inherent absurdity of almost any situation, no matter how dire.

Historic Zagreb

Talk to us about Hal and whether there are real-life influences of his character.

Anytime your main character is a comedian-turned-Congressman brought down by a Me-Too moment, Al Franken, the SNL writer-comedian who became a Senator, immediately comes to mind. But I definitely wouldn't say he was a model for Hal. Hal is quite different, both comedically and in terms of his more disgraceful moment of infamy. He is a bright fellow who knows he has succeeded partly by cheapening his humor with more lowbrow material, nor did he ever take himself seriously as a politician, and in some ways he believes he has gotten what he deserves. As the book opens, he's laying low on a Caribbean island, aimlessly in search of anything that might offer a new sense of purpose. So, when three CIA operatives approach him to say, "Hey, there's this quasi-dictator in Bolrovia who loves your stuff and has invited you for a visit, and we'd like you to accept the invitation in order to spy for us," well, he just might be desperate enough to take them up on it. 

Krakow Street Scene

The leader of this CIA contingent, and Hal's handler in Bolrovia, is Lauren Witt, someone with her own reservations about this op. Is she like any CIA agent you've met? 

That's impossible to know, because CIA officers out in the field can be operating under cover as aid workers, business people, or, if they have diplomatic cover, they might have some sort of title at the U.S. embassy like "political attache," or whatever. As a foreign correspondent I sometimes had off-the-record briefings with people who I suspected were working for the Agency, especially when they had more questions about what I'd seen out in the field than I had for them. As for women working in those jobs, I've obtained most of that kind of information either from ex-employees who've been kind enough to speak to me, or by culling insights from declassified archival material.

How do you manage to research details of CIA work? Tom Clancy got entree to look at warships. Do you have fans in the organization who have helped? 

 

You might be surprised by how helpful ex-CIA people can be once they know you're writing fiction, and that you won't be quoting them by name. About fifteen years ago, while doing research for a TV project that was never produced, I interviewed at length around two dozen people whose CIA careers dated back to the late 1940s. Some had even worked with the CIA's predecessor organization, the OSS. I learned a ton, not only about tradecraft abroad but also about interoffice tensions and rivalries, their social lives in Europe and in Georgetown, and the whole ethos of a life in which you can almost never reveal what you're really doing, not even to the people closest to you. That material helped shape not just this book but several others, and I continue to seek out those kinds of interviews to inform my work. There is also a load of interesting archival material that the CIA has declassified. Additionally, once you begin writing about this stuff, former employees will get in touch with you, unsolicited, to offer their own tales and insights, either by email or by approaching me after book signings. Plenty of this material creeps into my books. The more you learn, the more you keep learning.

Were you inspired by any Graham Greene novels when writing this book? Our Man in Havana comes to mind. Who are some of your other admired writers in the genre?

 

Yes, I suppose that influence is pretty obvious. In fact one of my early prospective titles was Our Man in Bolrovia. Another was The Comedian, a nod to Greene's The Comedians, although that was a far darker novel of his. I read most of his fiction back in my mid-to-late 20s, so I'm sure those influences are still at play somewhere deep in my head. As for others? Well, John le Carre always comes to mind, mostly for the way that he always put character ahead of action. Among my contemporaries, there are so many to choose from, so I'll mention a handful even as I cringe because I'll wish later I'd named more: Charlie Cumming, David McCloskey, Ilana (I.S.) Berry, Paul Vidich, Mick Herron, and... okay, I'd better stop before I run on for another paragraph.

 

I really think there should be more comic novels in general, and I absolutely love your comic spy novel. Do you think you would do this again (and forgive me if you wrote an earlier funny one that I don’t know about)?

 

With regard to doing something like this again, my rule is always 'Never say never.' As for earlier novels, I didn't think I had written a humorous one, but in the quite generous and perceptive review of Pariah that ran in the Sunday N.Y. Times Book Review, writer Christopher Bollen mentioned in passing the humor of a previous book of mine, Layover in Dubai, so I went back and read the opening chapter and, yes, it did have a similar tone, at least in those opening pages. It also featured a character who, like Hal, was quickly in over his head, although in this case it was a hapless and naive businessman who got caught up in the darker doings of a colleague. Having said that, the book I'm working on now is in a more serious vein. It's an update of my main character from Winter Work, an East German spymaster named Emil Grimm, who we'll rejoin about five years after the events of that book.

Your settings in past have included Sarajevo, New York City, Afghanistan, Germany, Dubai. What does your passport look like? Are you often traveling to fact check this material, or are some places better written about from memory?

 

My expired passports are probably the most interesting ones, since they include all those visa stamps from wartime travels, or from my first visits to the Middle East. But I have continued to travel on my own dime to many of these places because, even if I've already been somewhere, I always feel as if a refresher course is necessary if I'm going to set my next novel there. I returned to Berlin in April 2024 for the book I'm working on now, and I'm sure I'll continue to do this going forward. As you know yourself, from your own writing and travels, it's one of the best fringe benefits of being an author.

With shepherds in Afghanistan